Tech TitansCongratulations to Kiana Shirmanesh, the recipient of this year's Tech Titans $5,000 Florence Shapiro STEM Scholarship. Shirmanesh is graduating from Plano West Senior High School this spring. She will attend the University of Texas at Dallas in the fall and plans to study biology and pre-med.
Tech Titans established the Florence Shapiro STEM scholarship in 2013 and named it for the local former senator who spent years advocating for STEM education in the Texas legislature. It is awarded annually to a local graduating high school senior pursuing a degree in a STEM discipline at a local four-year college or university.READ MORE

Dallas Business JournalLinkedIn has agreed to be acquired by Microsoft in an all-cash deal valued at $26.2 billion.
The Mountain View company said it agreed to sell for $196 a share, a nearly 50 percent premium on its closing price.READ MORE

Penn State College of Engineering via ScienceDailyGiven the difficult-to-digest subject matter in many STEM classrooms, educators have customarily relied on traditional lecture-based educational methods where they spend class time walking through content and then assign homework problems to supplement that learning. The problem is that this is a difficult way for some students to learn, so educators applying a new approach by flipping their classrooms.
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CloudTechMachine learning is providing the needed algorithms, applications, and frameworks to bring greater predictive accuracy and value to enterprises' data, leading to diverse company-wide strategies succeeding faster and more profitably than before. The good news for businesses is that all the data they have been saving for years can now be turned into a competitive advantage and lead to strategic goals being accomplished.READ MORE

By Ross Lancaster In 2003, as a 19-year-old Stanford dropout, Elizabeth Holmes founded Theranos, a company that aimed to revolutionize the medical technology field. For years, it looked like Holmes' company was well on its way to becoming that revolutionary force with its Edison testing device, which claimed to accurately perform blood tests with just a finger prick. But as Holmes and Theranos have come crashing down in recent days, they may be the harbinger of another tech bubble bursting.
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dezeenSophisticated sensors could contribute to a healthier and happier workforce by tracking the way offices are used and adjusting them automatically, according to new research by U.S. furniture giant Haworth.
Used properly, the technology could turn offices into places that employees choose to be in for their overall wellbeing, says Haworth's Enabling the Organic Workspace: Emerging Technologies that Focus on People, Not Just Space white paper.READ MORE

Dallas Business JournalBusinesses across industries constantly face decisions that impact how they interact with customers and protect their digital identities. With the average consumer spending more than 11 hours each day on connected devices, businesses need a digital-first approach to cybersecurity that emphasizes a balance between security and privacy.
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eWeekA Tyntec/Ovum survey shows a gap exists in all vertical markets between consumers' expectations of mobile apps and what businesses are providing.
Customers' top priorities when contacting a company are getting through to an agent quickly (80 percent), and the speed with which their inquiry is resolved (74 percent), according to a Tyntec and Ovum survey of 1,000 consumers in the United States and Germany.READ MORE

TechTargetAs part of the international response to the recent Ebola outbreak, one organization implemented mobile apps to allow its community health workers to collect better data from survey subjects.
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Astrowatch.net via Phys.orgA new European project has an ambitious goal of cleaning up space for future generations. The Technology for Self-Removal of Spacecraft (TeSeR) program, introduced in May 2016, will develop a prototype for a module that will ensure that a defunct spacecraft pose no danger to other vehicles in space.READ MORE

The Wall Street JournalApple introduced a piece of technology recently that will likely never be used by any consumer. Instead, it kind of cleans up after them: a robot that breaks down iPhones for recycling.
The arrival of Liam — a 29-armed robot capable of taking apart 1.2 million iPhones a year — speaks to a big challenge facing tech manufacturers today. Even as they strive to entice consumers to ditch their existing devices for the next new thing, companies must figure out what to do with the growing numbers of devices that are destined for the scrapheap as a result.
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